Thoughts from a Sister by Cheryl Kimball

When Jack first mentioned what he was up to—running the Boston Marathon on the Mass Eye & Ear Team in honor of my late brother, his brother-in-law—I thought, this is cool. Then we started poring over Michael’s medical records and his running trophies and photo albums to gather information for the team write-ups, and I thought, this is sad. Then Jack started getting donations and some were from people who knew my brother and some of those donations were accompanied by stories of those people’s personal relationships with my brother and I thought, this is both cool and sad. Ultimately what has happened from this, seven years after my big brother’s death from cancer, is that he has come a bit alive for us again—and that is not sad at all. That is way cool.
It almost makes me feel like Michael was out there in the universe giving us a little prompting to say, hey guys, don’t forget about me (not that we would). But knowing my brother, who was perhaps one of the most unselfish people I have ever known, I even suspect he was responsible for pointing Jack in the direction of the Mass Eye & Ear Team saying, “Hey, I know you want to run the Boston Marathon. Here’s your chance to accomplish a personal goal and at the same time raise some money to help with research into this horrible disease and maybe help some other people avoid what I went through.” And that would be the coolest thing of all.